Newt Gingrich: ‘The Trump Republican Party’

The biggest takeaway message from Tuesday’s primaries and the Ohio special election is that the Republican Party is becoming President Trump’s Party.

In fact, the degree to which pro-Trump Republicans prevailed is the fifth major achievement of the Trump presidency’s first year and a half.

First, he and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have placed a record number of conservative, constitutionally-minded judges on the federal bench.

Second, he has moved power out of Washington and liberated businesses to accelerate economic growth through his historic deregulation effort.

Third, he succeeded in working with congressional Republicans to pass a massive tax cut, which has created jobs and grown the economy much faster than any of the elites thought possible.

Fourth, he has begun to rebuild the American military after the Obama administration spent eight years deliberately undermining it.

Now, the President has begun to grow a Trump Republican Party. The examples from Tuesday are striking, but this growth started earlier. In primary after primary, President Trump has proved to be a decisive voice. I saw this firsthand in Georgia, when his endorsement of Secretary of State Brian Kemp turned what was expected to be a close primary race into a one-sided victory for the Trump candidate. Similarly, on Tuesday the Trump endorsed candidates won the GOP nomination.

This is a very important long-term development because it means that in 2019 and beyond the President will have a Republican Party substantially more favorable to his policies. It also means that the never-Trumpers will gradually decline into a less noisy, less relevant part of American politics. The never-Trumpers are like the Bourbon monarchy, which “had learned nothing and forgotten nothing” (an apocryphal quote from Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord describing the Bourbons’ behavior after the abdication of Napoleon). Because of their inability to change, the Bourbons gradually disappeared as the French Republics created new patterns.

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